Tinubu distorting democracy, weaponizing judiciary –AD founding secretary, Udenta

The founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy, AD, Prof Udenta Udenta, has accused President Bola Tinubu of dismantling democratic values and weaponizing the judiciary and the 1999 Constitution (as amended) against Nigerians.

Udenta said this on ‘Sunrise Daily’, a programme on Channels Television on Thursday.

The fellow of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, who was reacting to the suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State, said the move was a distortion of democratic institutions by the Tinubu government.

“The system that should protect democratic governance, you are weaponising them; the judiciary, the apparatus of the state, you are distorting, diluting and transmogrifying them in a way and manner that is shutting down democratic conversations.

“That is what you find as the legacy of the Bola Tinubu president and his political agents. When you abandon the foundational norms of democracy and then you begin to use instruments you acquired in power to dismantle the guardrails that govern the democratic system, then democracy dies.

“It is not by firing a shot that democracy dies or crumbles, it is leveraging the guardrails like the constitution, like what was done in Rivers State, to abort democratic rules,”; he said.

Udenta also accused Rivers State Administrator, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (retd) of dismantling the levers of democracy with his suspension of all political appointees in the oil-rich state.

The scholar described what is practised in Rivers State as a “hybrid regime which is a part of competitive authoritarianism”; being deployed to “manacle the spirit of a nation and abort democratic institutions at all levels”; including labour unions, media houses, political parties, and civil societies.

He regretted that the quality of the lives of Nigerians in the last two years has depreciated, lamenting that there is widespread hunger and poverty in the land with escalating food inflation usurping the income of average Nigerians.